Artists of the Harlem Renaissance Period
Art History
Introduction
Pages 450 in the book “Framing America, Vol. 2, Frances K. Pohl
Period Key Artists and Authors: Augusta Savage, Aaron Douglas, Hale Woodruff, James Lesesne Wells, Archibald John Motley, Beauford Delaney, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, James van der Zee, Palmer Hayden, Jacob Lawrence, W.E.B. Du Bois, Allen Lohan Crite
The Harlem Renaissance was an influential movement of African-American art, literature, music, and theatre. The time period that influenced art movement emerged after the First World War, and was active through the Great Depression of the 1930s until the start of the Second World War. In the 1920’s African-American people related too what they called the “Harlem Renaissance”. The Harlem Renaissance was a period in which African-Americans were being successful in such areas as literature, music and in the arts. Some important aspects of the renaissance are the themes of the dreams and hopes of African Americans.
Why was this period hyped that is was considered to a period of renaissance? Well, “historians have liked to use that word to characterize some moment when a culture once dormant, has been reawakened”. (Huggins 3). This was a time in which World War I was over and a vast majority of African Americans came back to the country with a feeling of patriotism and since they fought overseas, they wanted some sort of freedom in their own land. “Harlem was the nerve center of Afro American life and the capital of the international black man, its intellectuals who wanted to affect political change had raised their voices to speak, and notably felt a certain type of aspiration about themselves. A key noted intellectuals of the Renaissance is W.E.B. Du Bois, an author who was a leader in the development of the movement. Du Bois, thought and founded a way to make the Renaissance a reality; he had a formula which he named “The Talented Tenth”, which basically consisted of “the black intelligentsia (novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, composers, academics and the like).” Du Bois believed that if whites were challenged to highly educated African Americans that would be the end of racism and inequality not only for blacks but for all classes. The African Americans seemed to free their tensions through their art, dance and music. They were “men who sensed that they were slaves to moral codes, than the thoughts of other ethnicity’s. A known common thread for the Harlem intellectuals saw themselves as promoters of their culture’s reawakening through achievements in the arts, literature and music.
Another well known key figure instrumental in the movement was Marcus Garvey, a prominent author of the movement could “induce people to share his dream because his fantasies were untroubled by the kind of paradoxes that perplexed men”, what Garvey did was to “give his dream a tangible reality”. During this period, most blacks wanted to go to Harlem to be surrounded by intellectuals, it was an impotent effort to convince political leaders to listen to these intellectuals, and relate to the aspirations of those individuals.
A thumbs up to another famous author of the Renaissance surely is Claude McKay, whom in “his most famous poem ‘If We Must Die’ is often cited for its militant spirit. In it, McKay calls upon black Americans to resist oppression even to death if necessary.
Music
During this period Harlem wasn’t always recognized merely on the literature, but on the society that surrounded its streets. Harlem opened its doors to a music called Jazz. Jazz began since the post-civil war era, created as “a mixture of the blues, work songs and spirituals” In remembering Jazz greats as Ellington and Armstrong, who later introduced the style to New York’s nightclubs. Many black intellectuals “considered jazz undefined and even denigrating to the African American image”. But that didn’t stop the people of Harlem supporting those music artists. The Cotton Club, The Savoy Ballroom and Rent Parties were created in Harlem to show everyone the musical potential that this town had. The Cotton Club was a club in which white people started to come to Harlem to see African Americans perform. The Savoy Ballroom was a nightclub open to all people regardless of their skin color.
Art and Artist
Jacob Lawrence was an African-American painter known for his portrayal of African-American life. But not only was he a painter, storyteller, and interpreter; he also was an educator. Artists like Archibald Motley Jnr, Lois Mailou Jones and Doris Ulmann all played a part in ensuring that the African American voice was heard in this period and then continued afterwards to establish the boundaries about the cultural history of Harlemites. The Crisis by the NAACP, played a major role also as a publisher of artistic and literary works of intellectuals of the Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a movement that placed an invaluable amount of Black Art into the history of the world
Jacob Lawrence
Series: In the Heart of the Black Belt, The Migration of the Negro, Self-portrait, 1977, Harriet Tubman (series), 1938–39, and Frederick Douglass (series), 1939–40
Artists Works
Henry Ossawa Tanner
The Banjo Lesson, Spinning By Firelight, 1894, Gateway, Tangier, 1912., The Arch, ca. 1914, and The Good Shepherd
Mary Edmonia Lewis
Minnehaha, marble, 1868, Bust of Dr. Dio Lewis (1868, The Death of Cleopatra, marble, 1876, Hiawatha, 1868, and Hagar 1868
Elizabeth Catlett
I Have Always Worked Hard in America, …In Other Folks’ Homes, Students Aspire, My Role Has Been Important…in the Struggle to Organize the Unorganized, Head of a Woman, In the Fields, Magic Mask, Mother and Child, Singing H
Augusta Savage
Federal Art Project (c. 1938), Busts of W.E.B. Dubois and Marcus Garvey, Gamin,
Works Cited & Consulted
Wintz, Cary D. Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996.
Singh, Amritjit. The Novels of the Harlem Renaissance. University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1976.
Kramer, Victor A. Harlem Renaissance Re-Examined. New York: The Whitston
Publishing Company, 1997.
